


Ten feathers

by soulofaminaanima



Series: birds of a feather [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, First Meetings, Gallifreyans have wings, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26285341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulofaminaanima/pseuds/soulofaminaanima
Summary: The first time the Doctor takes off the perception filter, Donna calls him a chicken-Martian, mostly to annoy him. The bloody alien did crash her wedding after all. He only corrects her on the ‘Martian’ part.Ten-something scenes from series four if Time Lords had wings. No actual additional plot.Can be read as a standalone.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Donna Noble, The Doctor & Donna Noble
Series: birds of a feather [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909840
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	1. First meetings

**Author's Note:**

> From the first part:
> 
> Donna compares his wings to those of a chicken, just to rile him up. A chicken that hands feathers to her, the Ood and Agatha Christie. But they’re also big and warm and he wraps them around her after he returns from Midnight. They shield her like an eagle shields its nest. Do they have eagles in space? She forgets to ask him and then she does not remember the wings at all.

“I could always fly us off this building?” the man who calls himself the Doctor offers her. They’re sitting at the edge of a random building in central London and she can see the London Eye from here. They’re about ten miles from the little church she and Lance chose to get married in.

Donna frowns and looks at the still smoking blue box behind them, “Your space ship is completely totalled, I’m not stepping back inside that thing.”

“No not with the TARDIS,” he interrupts, “but I could fly us off this building. All the way to your wedding, even. It would be a lot quicker than walking.” And the Doctor stands up and starts finicking with a silver cord around his neck. Donna tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear, it truly is windy up on the roof of the building they crashed on.

“Hold on, you’re telling me you could’ve flown me to my wedding _all this time_?” Her voice starts rising in octaves as she feels her anger and annoyance showing up again. Why didn’t he tell her this when they first landed in London centre? Or when she had to jump out of a speeding cab? Who does this alien think he is? Don’t they have weddings on Mars? Doesn’t he understand that she means it with the ‘today’s the most important day of her life’?

“Well…” the Doctor answers with that weird squeak-voice of his. He’s finally taken off the silver necklace and Donna can see it has what looks like a single red bead hanging on it. He places the necklace in a pocket. “It’s not recommended, flying around London like this and I’m sure UNIT and the Air Force will notice us, but I’m pretty sure I can shake them off our tail.”

He sounds proud when he says that and Donna has no idea what he’s talking about. They made a wrong turn and his space ship ended up in the heart of London. Then she had to jump out of a speeding car on the high way into said spaceship that barely got them back on the ground. The thing was smoking and sparking all the way to this roof and now this Martian claims he could’ve flown them to her wedding hours ago?!

Not that it would make a difference now, she’s already grandiosely late and this incident will probably follow her for the rest of her life. Her mother will never let her live this down. “What? You have another space ship hidden in your sleeve or something?” she barks.

“Not really.”

“Then how are you going to fly us there?” she asks him annoyed. The doctor simply smirks at her and wiggles his shoulders up and down. “C’mon Donna, don’t you see them yet?”

She’s ready to give him more biting words, because what the heck is he talking about, but then she blinks and sees them. Her eyes take her time to focus on them and it creates this weird effect where her vision tilts for a moment and when she blinks the effect away, the man in front of her is wearing wings.

What. The. Hell.

They’re big and brown. Brown like his suit, hair and eyes and they make his frame even more frail and make him look even more alien than anything she’s seen so far.

“You’re a chicken-Martian!” she screeches at him, scrambling back and remembering just in time she’s sitting on the edge of a _very_ high building. The Doctor looks insulted for the first time since meeting her and his wings droop a little bit. Donna feels like she has to re-evaluate her life if this is what it’s come to; getting abducted -twice- on her wedding day and getting saved by a chicken-alien-angel-Martian with a blue flying box.

“I’m _really_ not a Martian.” The Doctor tells her, shaking his head.

“But you _do_ have wings!” and the alien in front of her slowly spins around with his wings slightly spread. They’re a basic but warm brown and there are small golden flecks dusted along the bigger feathers; like freckles. Donna doesn’t actually know enough about chickens or birds in general to identify the wings, but maybe that’s not the right question to ask.

“And you can fly us to my wedding?” she asks and the Doctor opens his arms and wings wide as an answer. They slowly rise and fall with his breathing and look big enough to carry him away, maybe even with a second person. The stupidest thing is that Donna actually considers his offer.

“And what do you mean when you say you need to shake people off your tail?”

“Well, they’re most certainly going to notice us if we fly around like this. I try not to show them in London too much anymore, they attract the wrong kind of attention on this planet.” The Doctor tells her.

“Then we probably shouldn’t.” Donna answers him.

The Doctor frowns at her and folds the feathers away behind his back where they stay at rest. “Why not?”

Donna huffs, “Have you ever carried anything heavier than a child? You’ll probably drop me mid-flight, you and your spindly arms!”

“I have! I could definitely carry you. From here to Chiswick in half an hour tops.” He squares his shoulders, but the effect is lost on Donna.

“Is there a chance the military will shoot at us?”

“Well…”

“Then we’re not flying!” And with that, the discussion’s over.

The Doctor pouts and clasps the silver necklace back in place and the wings disappear. Donna’s sure they’re still there, just hidden from view and she wonders how many other secretly-alien people are walking about in London. She shakes the thought away and focusses on the more important things at hand: getting back to her wedding for one.

They walk down to the streets and take the first cab they see. Luckily, this one isn’t driven by a santa-robot. They drive in silence, which is fine by Donna. It gives her about an one hour window before the madness starts up again…

At the end of the day, when water slowly starts to return to the Thames and her mum and dad have finally hung up on her granddad after telling him she’s safe back home, Donna feels like she could sleep for a whole week. Forget her holiday/honeymoon to Egypt, she just wants to take off her silly white shoes and close her eyes.

Maybe if she falls asleep now, she’ll wake up on Christmas morning and all of this would have been a very weird dream. But as she sits down on her bed, still wearing the dirty and slightly wet wedding dress and takes off her shoes, she finds a single brown feather sticking to the lace of her dress.

She puts it on her nightstand and it’s still there in the morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Egypt was great, but Donna curses a lot at herself in the next year for not accepting the Doctor’s offer to travel with him. Who would turn down an invitation to sightsee the universe and still be back home in time for brunch with her grandfather? An idiot, of course.

She wishes she herself could turn back time and push her younger self into that Tardis. “Go explore! Get out of here! DO something with your life!”

Since she isn’t a Time Lord, she does the next best thing; search for the Doctor the old-fashioned human way. The man literally has all of time and space to travel to, but she knows he frequents London. Why, she has no idea, but she’s glad it is a place just around the corner and not a small town on another planet. She only has to look into the weirdest, or most shady thing happening in the English capitol and he’ll probably show up at one point or another.

It takes her a while, but it works!

He’s there, at Adipose Industries of all places! Standing in one of those window cleaning machines on the other side of the glass. The Doctor with his brown suit and unruly hair and curiosity that’ll get him in trouble wherever he goes.

In her excitement, Donna completely forgets the people in the room and they both have to run immediately. She’s running up the stairs and a small thought pops into her head; what if he’s taking another route down and that was the only time she sees him again?

The Doctor himself stops her negative thoughts by literally running into her as he sprints down the stairs. “Donna!”

Donna grabs him by his shoulders and stares at him for a few seconds. He seems to do the same with her. He still looks like he did on her wedding day; minus the wings she hasn’t seen since their chat on the rooftop. He isn’t sporting them now either, so Donna assumes he’s still wearing the silver necklace.

Their reunion is interrupted again and they’re running up the stairs, making a dash for the mechanical basket a cleaning service must’ve left. They’re halfway down the building when it all goes to hell. Their pursuers manage to snap one cable in half before the doctor can stop them and Donna stumbles and falls out of the basket.

She screams, scared to death, but she somehow manages to catch the loose cable on her way down. She’s hanging down the side of a very high building and the metal’s cutting into the palm of her hands.

“Hold on!” the Doctor yells at her from his own spot, still in the basket. She has no idea what she yells back at him, but she’s sure he gets the gist of her message: _do something!_

She can see the Doctor clambering over the tilted basket to get to her and above him on the roof, Miss Foster and her mercenaries move to the second and last cable that is keeping them in the air.

Both Miss Foster and the Doctor point their screwdrivers at the cable, but whatever is happening, the Doctor seems to lose their battle. The cable snaps and they’re falling….

Donna screams and then everything happens in slow-motion.

The cable Donna’s holding loses its tension as the heavier basket above her crashes to the ground. It feels like the drop of a roller coaster and she wonders what would kill her in the end: her own body hitting the ground or the basket landing on top of her and splatting her like a pancake.

Above her, the Doctor’s jumping out of the basket, trying to reach her for some reason. If there was more time and less panic, she’d be annoyed with him for that. What does he think holding each other as they crash to their death would do?

But the Doctor actually seems to be coming closer and closer somehow. Somehow, he’s reached her within a second and has his arms around her waist in another. It’s _then_ that she feels and sees the wings for the first time that evening.

The brown feathers brush her legs as the Doctor beats them once, twice and then they’re out of the trajectory of the falling steel basket. She wraps her arms around his neck, not caring if she’s squeezing too much. They’re still falling, but the Doctor tries to slow them down enough to avoid giving her whiplash before he tries to fly and steer them away from the building.

It all goes a bit awkward and Donna’s heart skips every other beat as the shocking movement of their flight almost dislodges her hold on him every other second. She finally has to stop screaming, but only because her lungs cannot continue any longer. The Doctor’s steering them away from the building while avoiding the falling cables and nearby trees. Donna has no idea where they’re going and if she can hold on long enough to reach their destination, but at least they’re not falling anymore.

And that is -of course- when the shooting starts.

The mercenaries on top of the building have recovered enough from their own surprise to load and aim their guns at them.

“Hold on!” the Doctor yells as he makes a sharp turn back towards the building, trying to avoid the onslaught of bullets shooting past them. Donna screams once more as she can feel her grip on the bony shoulders slipping again. They’re heading straight for the glass windows now and the Doctor wraps the wings tight around them as if he’s cannonballing into a pool.

The crash through the glass does _not_ feel like a splash in the pool. At all.

The impact of their bodies shatters the window inwards and they land on the carpet with a thud. The landing slams the air out of Donna’s lungs and there’s a ringing in her ears. There’s glass everywhere and the Doctor groans.

Donna’s heart is still hammering in her chest and she’s _soooo_ glad she refused the Doctor’s first offer to take her flying last Christmas. She knows it’s a silly thought at the most inappropriate time, but if she never has to fly like that again, it will be a day too soon.

Dazed, Donna tries to sit up. To move away from the Doctor who’s still loosely holding her. She moves a little bit uncoordinated, avoiding the shards of glass that fall off of them. The Doctor gives a squeak as she moves away, rolling over his wing and temporarily pinning him down to the floor in the process. Slowly, the pile of legs and feathers untangle so they can sit up.

Somehow, they’ve landed on the floor with the tied up woman. The captured journalist is yelling at them, probably a little bit in shock too. “What is happening? Who are you two?! Please get me out of here, please!”

The Doctor moves to the door but stops in his track, “Right… let’s get you out of here.” He walks over to the journalist with his bleeping-device in his hand. There’s glass stuck in his hair and wings and there’s glass on the floor that breaks under his feet when he frees the woman. Donna checks her own skin for any damage, but as far as she can see, there aren’t any cuts or gashes from their crash. The wings must’ve shielded her from most of the impact.

“Right, you alright?” He asks her. Donna nods, not daring to speak and have her voice betray her. Flying was both the most exhilarating and scary thing she’s ever done in her life.

That’s when the running continues again. Running and hacking alien technology and laughing as they stop the mad woman from killing a million people and converting them into fat. It’s the worst game of cat and mouse and Donna’s out of breath when they reach the roof. She’s never felt so alive, either.

“Matron Cofelia, listen to me!” The Doctor yells at the woman slowly being levitated towards the ship. There’s fat flying everywhere and Donna can hear several sirens coming from the city below. It’s madness, Donna thinks; she’s helping an alien trying to save another alien from being murdered by a third race of aliens. The Doctor yells and tries to convince the woman over the harsh winds and Donna instinctually grips the railing of the roof a little bit tighter.

“Mommy and Daddy don’t need the Nanny anymore!” He yells, but it’s already too late to convince her. The blue beam of light flickers off and the Matron falls to Earth. Donna doesn’t want to see it and faces away, towards the Doctor. But the madman has a different idea as he lurches over the edge of the stone railing and dives after the falling woman.

Donna screams and for a second she tries to stop him from jumping over, thinking it’s for sure going to kill him too.

But then she remembers that a falling Doctor is in as much danger as a ‘falling’ pigeon. She peers over the edge, wondering and hoping he’ll be fast enough to get to the Matron, but there’s a lower roof and several trees in the way, so she has no idea where they landed.

Donna swears as she hurries down the flight of stairs - again. When she finally steps outside the building, she can hear more sirens, closer this time. She tries to orientate on her surroundings, did they see the Matron fall on the north or south side of the building?

She starts circling the building in hopes of finding the Doctor, but he finds her first. He grabs her by her arm and drags her away from the streets towards a little alcove in the outside structure of the building.

“Oi!” she yells at him. The git scared her, doesn’t he know he shouldn’t grab and drag women to dark street corners. “Don’t do that, you stupid chicken!” She hits him on his arm for good measure.

“Looking for her has no use.”

“What?” she asks him, confused by his monotone voice. His face is emotionless too, a stone mask almost. He doesn’t explain it any further, but Donna summarizes that the Matron probably didn’t survive her fall and is a heap of fat and bones herself now.

The Doctor’s gaze is hard and it refuses to meet her gaze. His wings lie taut against his shoulders.

“It wasn’t your fault.” She tells him.

“I know.” He answers, but it doesn’t sound like he believes her. They’re still standing in the shadows of the building and Donna can hear the sirens from an ambulance stopping around the corner. There are other muffled voices too and Donna’s glad she doesn’t have to see it.

They only step out of the shadows once the Doctor looks calm enough to do so and Donna’s sure they’ve covered up the body by now.

“Hey, you two! You’re just _mad,_ you hear me!” and then there was the journalist again. She’s running over towards them awkwardly as she’s still trapped to her chair. Didn’t the Doctor free her of that thing? How did she get stuck, _again_?

“ _Mad_ , you are! And I’m going to report you for…madness!” she stumbles over her words and then makes a beeline to a couple of policemen observing the street.

“See, some people just can’t take it…” Donna mumbles. The Doctor agrees with her as they watch the mad journalist walk away from them. Donna can’t keep the smile off her face as she continues: “And some people can! So then…Tardis?”

And she drags the Doctor away from the scene before the journalist can point them out to the police officers. There are more medics and other people arriving on the scene, setting off the area. Donna steers around them when an alarming thought pops up in her head.

She looks at her Martian and confirms her suspicion: his wings!

The Doctor’s wings are still visible on his back, some feathers sticking up in weird angles form their crash through the window and mad rush through the building. But nobody seems to notice them or pay the Doctor any more attention than one would do to a normal human bloke.

“Hang on, your wings are still out,” Donna prompts, “but nobody seems to notice them?”

The Doctor gives her a weird look. “ _You_ can see them?” She nods. The wings are very much there, they look just like they did the first time he showed her on that roof: brown with random flecks of gold.

“I’m still wearing the perception filter, so the people around us can’t see them.” He loosens his tie and shows her the cord hidden around his neck. The red bead and silver necklace, just like she remembers the thing.

“But then how can I see them?” Donna wonders out loud.

“A perception filter only works if you don’t know it’s there. Your brain tricks you into ignoring the wings since -from a human standpoint- they aren’t supposed to be there. Usually, it takes people I meet a while to see through the filter,” and a proud smile appears on the Doctor’s face, “but your brain already caught on.”

Donna rolls her eyes at that, but she’s secretly proud. “Will I always see them from now on?”

The smile on the Doctor’s face freezes and he ducks his head. The wings also seem to shrink as he offers her in a soft voice: “Am I- There… I could make a stronger perception filter if they’re too much?”

“No…” Donna frowns, he wouldn’t be self-conscious about them now, would he? “I’ve known what you look like for a long time, you silly chicken. I wouldn’t have accepted your offer to travel with you if they bothered me.”

“Oh… good.” the Doctor actually sounds relieved with her answer. As if something as trivial as that would stop her from exploring the universe with him, Donna thinks. For all she cares, the Doctor could have gills, a tail, or antlers and it still wouldn’t ‘bother her’.

“Good,” he repeats, “because there’s still glass stuck in my wings and I might need help getting it all out.” Donna rolls her eyes, but she knows it wouldn’t be the weirdest job she’s ever done. Still, she’s going to complain about it from start to finish.

**Author's Note:**

> I have some additional ideas for this, but message me if you have a certain scene, or moment you want me to write about. English is not my first language, nor do I own Doctor Who or it's characters.


End file.
